Mission Statement, Learning Objectives, and Assessment Strategy

Mission Statement

Markets and Management Studies is a certificate program for Duke undergraduates wanting to study business, organizations, entrepreneurship, and related issues. The program prepares students for careers in business and management, banking, consulting, government, the non-profit sector, and related graduate fields.

Learning Objectives

The Markets and Management program has four primary learning objectives:

• to learn to bridge theoretical and applied research
• to learn to be an effective team player
• to develop effective written and oral communication skills
• to develop skills necessary for active, independent learning

Assessment Strategy

Markets and Management Studies (MMS) uses a variety of direct and indirect measures to assess our learning objectives. We have a long history of evaluating our progress both in particular classes and as a program, and we have an equally long history of incorporating feedback from those evaluations in our courses and other activities. During spring semester 2008, we reevaluated our missions, learning objectives, and assessment strategy and implemented additional assessment measures. The following paragraphs outline our strategy.

An important component of our assessment strategy is evaluating results of college and university-sponsored student course evaluations and senior exit surveys. The Trinity College Office of Assessment administers student evaluations at the end of each semester. These evaluations ask students to evaluate the course and instructor on a range of outcomes that overlap in important ways with MMS learning objectives and that provide important insight into the effectiveness of instruction in the program.

For example, survey questions asking about the following course elements allow us to evaluate our effectives on the specified learning objectives (corresponding learning objective in parentheses): gaining factual knowledge (objective 1); understanding fundamental concepts and principles (objective 1); learning to analyze ideas, arguments, and points of view (objective 1); learning to synthesize and integrate knowledge; learning to evaluate the merits of ideas and competing claims (objective 1); learning to conduct inquiry through methods of the field (objectives 2 and 4); developing writing skills (objective 3); developing skills in oral expression (objective 3).

In evaluating these surveys, we pay important attention to the rank of MMS courses compared to Trinity and university courses and the MMS director meets with any instructor falling noticeably below college and university standards to develop a plan for improving the course.

In addition, we track other outcomes including graduate rates, graduation with distinction rates, and student class ranks. We regularly review senior exit surveys and integrate feedback into future course planning. We sponsor an annual student paper award competition to encourage teamwork and active learning (objectives 2 and 4), and we provide cash prizes to encourage widespread participation in the competition.

Finally, we require a senior capstone course that allows us to evaluate student learning at the end of the program. Each capstone course requires students to complete a substantial project that integrates skills learned throughout the program and allows us to assess each of our learning objectives. A typical capstone project would be the development of a business plan for a new company or a marketing plan for a new product/technology. The projects provide students an opportunity to integrate theoretical and applied research to which they were exposed in their MMS courses (objective 1), require participation in a team (objective 2), require a final demonstration of written and oral communication skills (objective 3), and identify whether students have developed skills for active, independent learning (objective 4). The capstone is a critical course in the Certificate Program, arguably the most important one. Beginning in Fall 2008, we will select two capstone sections for more intensive pre- and post-test assessment of the learning objectives. A specially designed instrument will be used to make the assessments. Each student in the selected capstones will complete the instrument on the first day of the semester, and then again in the last scheduled class. Our goal is for a significant increase in measured skills for each learning objective. With two capstones tested each semester, each of our ten annual capstones would be on a cycle for review every 2-3 years.